Acupuncture Alongside Acupuncture

Most people booking a first acupuncture appointment want to know one thing: does it hurt. The needles are about as thick as a hair and much finer than anything used for an injection. Insertion is usually a small prick or nothing at all; what follows is often a dull, heavy, spreading feeling that practitioners take as a good sign and that patients describe as odd rather than painful. Minor bruising happens and fades.

The practical version: an hour for the first visit, about forty-five minutes after that. Questions first — more of them than you expect, covering sleep, digestion and energy even if you came in about a shoulder — then pulse and tongue, then needling with you lying on a table, usually under a blanket, for twenty to thirty minutes. You are not left alone in the building. A lot of people fall asleep.

What we see most of in Freshwater is the local mix: surfers\u{2019} shoulders and necks, swimmers from the ocean pool, runners off the coast walk, and the necks and low backs of everyone who drives over the Spit twice a day. Sport-related problems generally respond faster than long-standing ones, and we will tell you which category yours looks like.

Courses are usually weekly at first, with a review at four sessions. We are ten streets from Balgowlah and about twenty from Manly. Acupuncturists in Australia are AHPRA-registered under the Chinese Medicine Board, and the register is public.